Jayur Madhusudan Mehta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University, where he also serves as Undergraduate Program Director. His research specializes in human-environment interactions, coastal archaeology, and Indigenous heritage preservation, with field projects spanning the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Delta. Mehta holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Tulane University (2015), an M.A. from the University of Alabama (2007), and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina (2004). His interdisciplinary work integrates geoarchaeology, ethnohistory, and environmental reconstruction to study how past societies responded to ecological challenges. Current initiatives include mediating coastal hazards for Indigenous communities, restoring ancient fisheries through paleoenvironmental analysis, and documenting plantation archaeology at Evergreen Plantation in Louisiana. Mehta's publications predominantly explore climate adaptation, cultural landscape resilience, and monumentality in Mississippian societies. His methodological approaches combine remote sensing, sedimentology, and spatial analysis to reconstruct historical ecologies and settlement patterns. He actively recruits graduate students for coastal archaeology projects and leads field schools focused on African Diaspora archaeology. As principal investigator for multiple research consortia, Mehta collaborates with Indigenous communities and federal agencies to develop culturally informed conservation strategies.
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